Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?

doist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 325 posts

Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?

#221

Post by hrktb »

veddox wrote: post #183
andrei_says_ wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, authority by expertise vs authority by hierarchy make a big difference. As in, people have the security guy vet their security decisions — not because he has power over them but because they trust his expertise. Suddenly everything becomes easy and self organized.

> Suddenly everything becomes easy and self organized. Unfortunately not. A technocracy works great works great when choices are straight-forward, but one of the great responsibilities of leadership is taking decisions when things are anything but. A good leader is not one who always knows the right answer, but one who knows how to figure out a good enough answer more often than not. And who does so under confusing c…

I am not sure finding acceptable answers in confusing and complex situations needs to be the role of a leader.

For instance in some orgs being a system architect has no hierarchical implications. People who are recognised to be good at designing systems get the title, take decisions when no clear consensus is reached, and can still be overruled when other experts veto their decisions (it then becomes a matter of which expert has precedence. E.g. legal wins over anything else)

Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?

#222

Post by jessaustin »

marksweston wrote: post #149
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #9

I would like to refer to the following - The Tyranny of Structurelessness, originally meant to address the concerns regarding 'flat' organizations. "This means that to strive for a structureless group is as useful, and as deceptive, as to aim at an "objective" news story, "value-free" social science, or a "free" economy. A "laissez faire" group is about as realistic as a "laissez faire" society; the idea becomes a sm…

It’s hard not to see this as purely a response to an article title. It bears no relation to the actual article content, which was thoughtful and interesting and really deserved a more on-topic critique.

There is a great deal of this on HN.

Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?

#223

Post by Matticus_Rex »

achenatx wrote: post #79

The problem with explicit leadership positions is that people have no downward mobility. If you are bad, then the organization loses a great resource. I like the model of dept head in academia. Professors really want to be doing research, but they also need a dept head who handles administration. No one really wants to do it, so it rotates through the department. There are some perks like a pay bump, reduced teaching…

Holacracy has some mechanisms for this -- work gets divided into explicit roles (most people have 3-15), and what roles you fill can be pretty fluid based on the needs of the work, etc. Some roles may come with some decision-making power, and management functions get divided among the roles in whatever way makes sense for the job -- sometimes they cluster at a single point (such as a liaison to a bunch of outside contractors), while other times they're completely distributed between roles or even delegated to a process rather than an individual. There's a lead for each "circle" (team), but it's mostly a coordinating role -- they search for the ideal role-fillers, and they manage questions of prioritization (at least by default -- basically everything is customizable in Holacracy). There's nothing particularly special or manager-y about the lead role (I actually strongly dislike the one lead role I have), and leads can't hire or fire people to the company, so even if you get moved out of a role that doesn't necessarily mean anything for your job (although if no one thinks you're a good fit for roles in any circles, that doesn't bode well).

It avoids the politics of democratic selection, while decentralizing the power dynamics enough that tyranny is more-or-less impossible.

Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?

#224

Post by devjungle »

stevenpetryk wrote: post #62
pinkfoot wrote: post #8

Find out who can approve an invoice for payment. He's the boss.

It takes really little effort to use "they" instead of "he" to include all people.

It also take just as little effort to ignore this usage. I understand why you would say that, but what someone writes is their own - they might feel differently. Besides, "he" (or now, just as appropriately "she") is very common when referring to an unknown in English. Anyone reading should understand that there is usually no intent to exclude and that it's merely a side effect of the language.

Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?

#225

Post by jessaustin »

syntaxing wrote: post #156
stevenpetryk wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes really little effort to use "they" instead of "he" to include all people.

Serious question, I was taught in High School that he is grammatically correct as a gender neutral pronoun where the gender is unknown[0]. Is this not the case anymore? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-person_pronoun#Generic_h...

The high school idiom is not inclusive. I agree that 3PP is rarely felicitous to those who speak English. In this case it contributes to confusion: "they" refers most naturally to the entire organization. The best alternative depends on the context. In this case one could have written, "That person is the boss."

Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?

#226

Post by ravenstine »

narnianal wrote: post #130
ravenstine wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have webs of power, but I've found that organizations that work this way have a lot of dysfunction. That's not to say that a hierarchy can't be dysfunctional, but I do think that well constructed hierarchies without tyrants are preferable to their "webbed" equivalent, since webs are almost always inefficient and serve to mask a lot of the power for the sake of a superficial form of equality or equity. I won't…

you assume that organizations with inofficial power webs only have official goals? The inofficial goals might strive very well while the official organisation struggles. For instance I assume even if McDonalds shops struggle financially McDonalds itself is still quite happily collecting rent from them.

Oh, I don't assume that, and you bring up a very good point that goes over most people's heads. In fact, it reminds me of how I learned that most organizations of appreciable size don't care much about efficiency. When things become more efficient, it not only rocks the boat, but people can be put out of work; once the cash-cow has been established, people want things to stay the same, lest they lose access to the udders of said cow. This is despite the fact that such an organization will publicly value "innovation", "creativity" and "hard work".

Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?

#227

Post by lapnitnelav »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #46
fapjacks wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with something of an abstraction of what they're saying, when I read things like this, it's hard for me to see anything but a person that wants to hijack the tyranny for themselves.

I've seen / experienced several train-wrecks caused by flat / self-organizing teams (see my sibling comment). In those catastrophes, I would have been glad for almost anybody to take on the role of team leader / manager. So I'd be reluctant to assume the argument for structure is motived by personal ambition.

I've been in the opposite situation once and it turns out upper management wasn't really fine with a self directed team without a designated manager / leader.

Granted they wanted to introduce changes and needed someone to enforce that. We ended up sort of pushing in unison for the person who we thought would be the best and he did a fine job managing that team.

Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?

#228

Post by clairity »

ivanhoe wrote: post #209

There's one thing I've learned from white water rafting: On slow parts democracy works fine - everyone discussing about the best path - but when things start happening fast you need a single captain to make the calls, otherwise you end up hitting every single rock in the river while trying to agree if it's better to go left or right around it.

a somewhat similar phenomenon happens in basketball. when the game is not competitive, no leader is needed and everyone just plays to their ability (and hopefully to their strengths).

but when the game gets competitive, it's easy to fall apart and get beaten without a leader. on offense, that's usually the point guard (e.g., steph curry), who implicitly chooses who gets the ball, when they get it, and for how long. on defense, a forward/center (e.g., draymond green), who can see the whole floor in front of them, often has the responsibility of coordinating the defense to minimize gaps and mismatches.

Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?

#229

Post by [deleted] »

hrktb wrote: post #221
veddox wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Suddenly everything becomes easy and self organized. Unfortunately not. A technocracy works great works great when choices are straight-forward, but one of the great responsibilities of leadership is taking decisions when things are anything but. A good leader is not one who always knows the right answer, but one who knows how to figure out a good enough answer more often than not. And who does so under confusing c…

I am not sure finding acceptable answers in confusing and complex situations needs to be the role of a leader. For instance in some orgs being a system architect has no hierarchical implications. People who are recognised to be good at designing systems get the title, take decisions when no clear consensus is reached, and can still be overruled when other experts veto their decisions (it then becomes a matter of whic…

[deleted]

Re: No Kings: How Do You Make Good Decisions Efficiently in a Flat Organization?

#230

Post by aeternus »

veddox wrote: post #195
achenatx wrote: post #79

The problem with explicit leadership positions is that people have no downward mobility. If you are bad, then the organization loses a great resource. I like the model of dept head in academia. Professors really want to be doing research, but they also need a dept head who handles administration. No one really wants to do it, so it rotates through the department. There are some perks like a pay bump, reduced teaching…

That's why democracies have terms of office, and that's exactly what we do in our student organisation. You're right: there has to be a way to get somebody out of a misfitting leadership role without completely humiliating him. Regular elections are a great way of doing so, and giving many different people the chance to lead benefits both them and the organisation.

One method I've found to work well, especially with engineers:

Make it clear to the team that the new leader is stepping up temporarily to fill a significant business need. That the engineer is doing the team a favor by doing this and that the plan is for it to be temporary because that engineer is a great IC.

It then becomes very easy for the new leader to go back to being an IC. They can even be thanked for stepping up to help the company during a critical time. They can also easily do it again in the future.

If the person is a great lead and gains the team's respect, then simply make it permanent.

Post reply on HN